JoJo Grayson is the Queen Bee of the schools in-crowd, the “it” girl, the one who everyone wanted to be with and emulate. As DEAD, ACTUALLY opens Willow’s parents have just told her they are off to Africa to start a church and she herself was the one who last spoke to JoJo Grayson before finding her body in a car accident. She is not one to care about running with the pack she is funny, independent and has a big time crush on her best friend Macey’s brother. Willow is very sensible though and is into study, caring and social justice. Her parents have now stopped with the drugs but become over the top religious zealots instead. Willow comes from a moneyed background, but life hasn’t been easy, her parents were drug addicts so she virtually brought herself up, while caring for them. Kaz Delaney nailed it – I could almost imagine I was on the Gold Coast in a coffee shop with a gaggle of teen girls twittering away behind me. I knew what to expect as far as writing style went – it is a book about teens, written for teen so it was going to be full of typical teen talk and attitudes.

I had a fair idea that I was going to love DEAD, ACTUALLY not just because I enjoyed the second book, but because when it was released in 2012 it won Favourite Paranormal Romance 2012 with the Australian Romance Readers Association, Best Young Adult novel 2012 with the Aurelias Award and was also long listed for a Davitt Award in the Best Children’s YA 2012 category. I recently read the second book in the ‘Dead’ series, Almost Dead, and loved it, so was chuffed to be offered the first book to read and review.

Dead, Actually by Kaz Delaney